The determining factor of a preferred orientation of GaN domains grown on m-plane sapphire substrates.

Epitaxial lateral overgrowth in tandem with the first-principles calculation was employed to investigate the determining factor of a preferred orientation of GaN on SiO2-patterned m-plane sapphire substrates. We found that the (1100)-orientation is favored over the (1103)-orientation in the region with a small filling factor of SiO2, while the latter orientation becomes preferred in the region with a large filling factor. This result suggests that the effective concentration determines the preferred orientation of GaN: the (1100)- and (1103)-orientations preferred at their low and high concentrations, respectively.

Integrated Chemical Vapor Sensor Based on Thin Wall Capillary Coupled Porous Glass Microsphere Optical Resonator.

A miniaturized chemical vapor sensor probe was developed using a porous glass microsphere (PGM) as the alignment-free optical microresonator. The porous microsphere was placed inside a thin wall silica capillary tube that was fusion-spliced to an optical fiber. The whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of the microsphere were excited by the evanescent field of the light propagating inside the capillary thin wall.

Fiber pigtailed thin wall capillary coupler for excitation of microsphere WGM resonator.

In this paper, we demonstrate a fiber pigtailed thin wall capillary coupler for excitation of Whispering Gallery Modes (WGMs) of microsphere resonators. The coupler is made by fusion-splicing an optical fiber with a capillary tube and consequently etching the capillary wall to a thickness of a few microns. Light is coupled through the peripheral contact between inserted microsphere and the etched capillary wall.

Optical microresonator based on hollow sphere with porous wall for chemical sensing.

A porous-wall hollow glass microsphere (PW-HGM) was investigated as an optical resonator for chemical vapor sensing. A single mode optical fiber taper was used to interrogate the microresonator. Adsorption of chemical molecules into the nanosized pores induced a refractive index change of the thin wall and thus a shift in its resonance spectrum.